Contents

Overview·· 2

Benefits· 3

RAID configuration· 3

Concepts· 3

Feature overview· 3

Mechanism·· 5

Restrictions· 5

Automated OS installation· 6

Concepts· 6

Feature overview· 6

Mechanism·· 7

Automated OS installation· 7

Automated driver installation· 7

Server hardware diagnostics· 8

Concepts· 8

Feature overview· 8

Device information display· 8

Fast diagnostics· 9

Stress test 10

Data export 11

Mechanism·· 11

Restrictions· 12

Acronyms· 13

Overview

The H3C integrated Fast Intelligent Scalable Toolkit (iFIST) is a single-server management tool pre-installed in an H3C server. iFIST provides an intuitive graphical user interface for users to configure RAID settings and automated OS installation settings, and diagnose hardware, facilitating daily server O&M and troubleshooting.

iFIST provides the following key features:

·     Supports both Legacy and UEFI boot modes.

·     Compatible with most storage controllers.

·     Supports automated installation of mainstream operating systems and drivers on the server.

·     Supports diagnosing key hardware components on a server.

As shown in Figure 1, iFIST consists of the following layers:

·     Hardware layer—Hardware storage space on a server that is used to store the H3Linux operating system files and the iFIST application program.

·     Operating system layer—H3Linux, which provides the operating environment for the iFIST application program.

·     Application layer—Provides the graphical user interface of iFIST based on the browser/server architecture.

Figure 1 iFIST architecture

Benefits

·     Simplified RAID configuration—Provides a unified Web interface for creating, deleting, importing, and exporting logical drives on storage controllers in various operating modes.

·     Automated OS and driver installation—Provides the following functions:

¡     Automated installation of mainstream operating systems (including Windows Server, RedHat Linux Enterprise, SUSE Linux Enterprise, CentOS, VMware ESXi, Ubuntu, and H3C CAS) and drivers (through REPO).

¡     Export and import of OS settings.

·     Proactive hardware diagnostics and fault detection—Supports running diagnostic tests on server hardware components. This helps administrators detect server faults proactively to ensure stable operation of the server.

RAID configuration

Concepts

Redundant Arrays of Independent Drives (RAID) is a technology that enhances the security and stability of the server storage system. RAID configuration requires that a storage controller be installed on a server. With a storage controller installed, you can group a number of physical drives to create a RAID array (also known as a logical drive) to provide data redundancy and validation functions.

iFIST allows you to easily create logical drives on various types of storage controllers from the iFIST Web interface, which greatly streamlines RAID configuration and improves configuration efficiency.

Feature overview

RAID configuration involves the following tasks:

·     Create RAID arrays—Select physical drives to build a RAID array with the specified name, RAID level, and other settings.

Figure 2 Create a RAID array

·     Manage physical drives—View information about the physical drives on the server and manage drives such as initializing and uninitializing the drives.

Figure 3 Manage physical drives

·     Manage logical drives—View information about the logical drives on the server and manage logical drives, such as deleting the drives.

Figure 4 Manage logical drives

Mechanism

iFIST can integrate with storage controller drivers as well as the management tools and RESTful APIs provided by storage controller vendors. After the user configures RAID settings through the iFIST Web interface, iFIST automatically calls the related tools to apply the settings to the server.

Restrictions

Table 1 lists the storage controllers supported by iFIST on different types of servers.

Table 1 Supported storage controller models

Automated OS installation

Concepts

A user often encounters the following issues during the manual OS installation process:

·     The storage controller driver in not integrated in the OS image, resulting in hard drive recognition failures during the installation process.

·     Manual intervention (such as configuring installation parameters) is required during the OS installation process, which increases the O&M time.

·     After the operating system is installed, the user needs to manually install the required drivers.

To address the preceding issues, iFIST provides automated OS installation on the server. A user can configure all the OS installation parameters on the iFIST Web interface, which then automatically installs the operating system on the server without manual intervention.

Feature overview

After the Configure system settings page is opened, iFIST performs the following operations:

1.     Determines the type of OS image to be installed according to the user-defined image source. Supported image source include CD (physical CD or HDM virtual media) and USB flash drive.

2.     Determines whether a repository has been mounted to the server. If yes, iFIST displays the drivers that match the OS and can be installed in the repository on the Configure system settings page.

A repository is released by H3C and it contains a bundle of driver and firmware installation packages for servers.

The configurable OS installation parameters on the page vary by the OS type. For example, to install a Windows operating system, you can perform the following tasks:

·     Select the drivers to be installed.

·     Select the OS image file to be installed. For example, if the image source contains two image files (Windows Server 2012 R2 ISO files for standard edition and datacenter edition), you can select which one to install.

·     Specify the host name, password, and key for the operating system.

·     Specify the target drive (physical or logical) for OS installation and set the drive capacity. As opposed to OS installation on a random drive, installing the operating system on a designated drive helps reduce the risk of data loss.

Figure 5 shows an example of the Configure system settings page. The page content varies depending on the operating system to be installed.

Figure 5 Configure system settings page

Mechanism

Automated OS installation

Each OS vendor implements its own automated OS installation mechanism, such as the ks.cfg file-based mechanism for Linux and the unattend.xml file-based mechanism for Windows. Based on in-depth analysis of the vendor-specific automated OS installation mechanisms, iFIST provides the automated OS installation feature to enable automated installation of most mainstream operating systems. This feature also resolves the hard drive recognition issues caused by lack of compatible storage controller drivers. The automated OS installation feature of iFIST greatly speeds up the OS installation process and reduces the O&M costs on a server.

Automated driver installation

After installing the operating system on a server, iFIST can proceed to install the drivers required by the operating system. The user just needs to mount the repository that contains the driver packages to the server and select the drivers to be installed in the OS installation settings. Then, iFIST will automatically install the drivers after the OS installation completes.

Server hardware diagnostics

Concepts

After the server has been running for a long time, some hardware components might fail due to physical loss and other reasons, causing problems such as system downtime. This kind of hardware failure might appear irregularly and is difficult to reproduce in the normal use of the server, which compromises the stability of the server. In order to resolve the issue, iFIST provides the server hardware diagnosis function to help quickly and accurately troubleshoot hardware faults by testing the hardware performance in various load conditions.

The                     server hardware diagnosis function includes the following parts:

·     Device scanning—Scans the hardware devices on the server and presents the hardware information for users to assess the overall hardware configuration state of the server.

·     Fast diagnostics—Runs basic tests on the server hardware components to troubleshoot basic problems.

·     Stress tests—Runs compressive stress tests on the server hardware components to troubleshoot problems that are not easy to detect.

Feature overview

The iFIST server hardware diagnosis function provides the following capabilities:

·     Displays information about key hardware components on the server, such as the CPU, memory, PSU, fan, HDM, PCIe, NIC, and GPU.

·     Runs fast diagnostic tests and stress tests on server hardware components such as the CPU, memory, PSU, fan, HDM, PCIe, NIC, and GPU.

·     Displays the hardware test state and results on the iFIST Web interface.

·     Exports the server hardware information and test results to a USB flash drive.

Device information display

iFIST displays information about the hardware components on the server on the Device Info tab of the Server Diagnostics page.

As shown in Figure 6, the Device Info tab displays the system information as well as information about individual hardware components, including BIOS, HDM, CPU, memory, storage, NIC, PSU, fan, and temperature sensor. You can expand or collapse the information area for a hardware component as needed.

Figure 6 Device Info tab

Fast diagnostics

On the Fast diagnostics tab of the Server Diagnostics page, the user can configure the fast diagnostics settings to run tests on the selected hardware components. iFIST supports the following fast diagnostics test modes:

·     Common test—Test the selected hardware components one by one until the last component is tested.

·     Cyclic test—Test the selected hardware components repeatedly for the specified number of cycles.

·     Timed test—Test each of the selected hardware components for the specified duration one by one.

Figure 7 Fast diagnostics tab

Stress test

As a supplement to fast diagnostics, stress tests can detect hidden hardware problems that cannot be detected in fast diagnostics to provide best-effort server operation assurance. Stress tests support the following modes:

·     Common test—Test the selected hardware components one by one until the last component is tested.

·     Cyclic test—Test the selected hardware components repeatedly for the specified number of cycles.

Figure 8 Stress test tab

Data export

On the Data Export tab of the Server Diagnostics page, you can export the server hardware information and test results to a USB flash drive for further analysis.

Figure 9 Data export tab

Mechanism

iFIST can obtain hardware information through both HDM and H3Linux on the server.

The following tables show the supported test items for fast diagnostics and stress tests.

Table 2 Fast diagnostics

Table 3 Stress test

Table 4 Memory read and write test models

Restrictions

Table 1 lists the server models that support the hardware diagnostics features.

Table 5 Server models that support the hardware diagnostics features

Acronyms